The number of successful cyberattacks per year per company has increased by 46% over the last four years. But what really needs to be considered when exploring a solution? What questions need to be asked? Download to find out...

Nvidia shutters controversial GeForce Partner Program

It's a minor coup for AMD

NVIDIA HAS SHUTDOWN its GeForce Partner Program (GPP) after it came under fire for supposedly forcing hardware partners to adopt the graphics giant's tech.

Team Green had proposed the program as a means of "ensuring that gamers know what they're buying and can make a clear choice".

But various reports painted a program that forced companies wishing to sell Nvidia graphics cards, for example, to have their brands completely aligned with Nvidia. So under Asus' Republic of Gamers brand the PC hardware maker wouldn't be able to have AMD cards; such a move prompted it to create a sub-band called AREZ in order to sell AMD GPUs.

John Teeple, the bloke at Nvidia responsible for the GeForce Partner marketing, said that there's been a fair amount of rumours, conjecture and mistruths about the intent of the GPP. However, rather than battle the misinformation, Nvidia will shutter GPP a mere two months after its March debut.

"With GPP, we asked our partners to brand their products in a way that would be crystal clear. The choice of GPU greatly defines a gaming platform. So, the GPU brand should be clearly transparent - no substitute GPUs hidden behind a pile of techno-jargon," he said.

"Most partners agreed. They own their brands and GPP didn't change that. They decide how they want to convey their product promise to gamers. Still, today we are pulling the plug on GPP to avoid any distraction from the super exciting work we're doing to bring amazing advances to PC gaming."

Now we take the words of marketers with a hefty pinch of salt, and we'd argue that between the efforts of hardware makers and Nvidia, it's pretty clear to see when a desktop or laptop is running a GeForce or Radeon GPU, or whether a monitor is using G-Sync or FreeSync, given boxes, devices and websites come with stickers, branding and snaplines promoting tech from Team Green or Team Red.

And gamers or creatives keen on getting graphics tech will likely already know if they want an AMD or Nvidia GPU. We'd rather such hardware firms make naming their graphics cards and tech a little easier.

We also doubt ending the GPP will have much of a dent on hardware firms making use of Nvidia tech, given the company makes some of the best GPUs around; such a move will simply give hardware firms more scope with what they can offer to a wider range of PC fans. Nevertheless, this can be seen a minor coup for AMD. µ